In practice

Why your catering numbers are always slightly wrong

Over-ordering costs margin, under-ordering costs reputation. How to arrive at a number that holds, and who carries the risk.

Team MiceBird13 March 20266 min read

Three numbers side by side: 100 expected, 95 guaranteed and 87 actual

The client says a hundred. You buy for a hundred. Eighty-seven people turn up, and thirteen portions go unpaid for by anyone except you.

Or the reverse: a hundred and five arrive, the last ten get a smaller plate, and the evening ends with a client asking how this could happen.

Both problems come from the same source: the number you bought against was an estimate that nobody explicitly called an estimate.

Three numbers that get confused

Three different figures circulate in every event conversation, and most misunderstandings come from not keeping them apart.

The expected number is what the client thinks will come. It's in the enquiry and it's almost always optimistic.

The guaranteed number is what the client pays regardless, even if fewer turn up. This is the only figure that matters financially.

The actual number you only know on the night.

A quote that names only the first shifts the entire risk onto you without anyone having decided that.

Fix the guaranteed number

The industry standard is clear and rarely disputed when you state it in advance:

Moment	What happens
At signature	Expected number recorded
10 working days ahead	Number may drop by up to 10%
5 working days ahead	Final number — this is the guarantee
After that	Up is usually fine, down is not

Five working days isn't arbitrary: it's roughly what a kitchen needs to buy in without running into rush surcharges.

At closed events — a staff party, a wedding — the number is reasonably predictable. At events with open registration it's an entirely different matter: rarely more than eighty percent of registrations turn up, and at free events often fewer.

If your client is basing their number on registrations, say out loud that this isn't the same as the number of guests. Many organisers don't know this, and they'll thank you for explaining it before it goes wrong rather than after.

Agree a range instead of a single figure: "we'll cook for 95, we can handle up to 110". That costs almost nothing in purchasing and takes the tension out of the final week, because small fluctuations simply fit.

Dietary requirements are part of the number

The number is one thing, the composition another. In a group of a hundred there are now easily fifteen to twenty special requirements: vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, allergies, religious observance.

Getting those two days ahead is a problem; getting them with the final number is routine. So ask for them in the same request, not in a separate email later.

And agree what happens to requirements arriving after that. One extra vegetarian portion is nearly always manageable; a gluten-free menu for three on the morning itself usually isn't. Saying so in advance prevents the conversation where a guest has no food and nobody knows who was responsible.

What you do with the surplus

Every venue has leftovers. The difference is whether they're priced in.

Build a few percent of surplus into your package price — it's a real cost, like breakage and staffing. Venues that don't, price structurally too low and cover the gap out of margin without ever seeing it.

And agree what happens to the surplus. Staff eating, a food bank collecting, guests taking it home: anything beats throwing it away, and it's a conversation you have once and never again.

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